Virtual Border Fence Prototype Rejected (Updated)

The much anticipated "virtual" fence prototype appears to have come to a swift end, AP reports:

The government is scrapping a $20 million prototype of its highly touted "virtual fence" on the Arizona-Mexico border because the system is failing to adequately alert border patrol agents to illegal crossings, officials said.

The move comes just two months after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced his approval of the fence built by The Boeing Co. The fence consists of nine electronic surveillance towers along a 28-mile section of border southwest of Tucson.

Boeing is to replace the so-called Project 28 prototype with a series of towers equipped with communications systems, new cameras and new radar capability, officials said.

Less than a week after Chertoff accepted Project 28 on Feb. 22, the Government Accountability Office told Congress it "did not fully meet user needs and the project’s design will not be used as the basis for future" developments.

A glaring shortcoming of the project was the time lag between the electronic detection of movement along the border and the transmission of a camera image to agents patrolling the area, the GAO reported.

Although the fence continues to operate, it hasn’t come close to meeting the Border Patrol’s goals, said Kelly Good, deputy director of the Secure Border Initiative program office in Washington.

It’s not clear what the difference is between the current virtual prototype and the proposed do-over.

Update:

It appears the government isn’t all that unhappy with the border fence. DANGER ROOM received a statement refuting a good part of the AP story:

The Associated Press story on the virtual fence contains inaccuracies and omits important context. Foremost, the federal government is not “scrapping” the virtual fence. With the demonstration project that was accepted in February, the department established that the virtual fence works. It has been assisting the Border Patrol in detecting illegal activity for months, and we’ll use similar technologies elsewhere at the border in the future. The initial “virtual fence” demonstration project, known as P-28, was never intended or purported to be the perfect, end-state solution. It is a prototype. We anticipated a need for some changes to the prototype once the Border Patrol started using it. That is why the towers were mobile rather than permanently fixed to the ground. It would have made no sense to cement towers into the earth, if we knew there was a possibility they might need to be moved a few yards in another direction to maximize effectiveness. We also recognized that we might learn, after using the system for a while, that the Border Patrol could conclude that they needed a radar system on a tower where there was a camera, or vice-versa.

Still, in this short time, the virtual fence has already led to roughly 3,000 apprehensions at the border. We are now at a stage where we can begin to permanently fix these towers to the ground. As we predicted, some towers will be modified or replaced. But, it would be wrong to conclude that the federal government is scrapping the virtual fence. Further, it is simply incorrect to assume that the first phase of the virtual fence exceeded roughly $20 million. In fact, the virtual fence cost the tax payers less. We actually received a credit back from the contractor for a few items that were found to be, at one time, underperforming.